


The Shunned House, Minus The Racism

by TheseusInTheMaze



Category: Good Game (TV 2017)
Genre: Alcoholism, Anger, Demons, Dissociation, Loneliness, M/M, mold, rot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 01:52:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17613191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/pseuds/TheseusInTheMaze
Summary: The thing was... Alex hadn't actuallymeantto ruin the place. He hadn't woken up one morning and thought 'yes, let me ruin my environment with my misery,' because Alex wasn't that kind of guy.





	The Shunned House, Minus The Racism

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fallenandscatteredpetals](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallenandscatteredpetals/gifts).



> There are a lot of gratuitous Stephen King and H. P. Lovecraft references in here. I make no apologies.

The thing was... Alex hadn't actually _meant_ to ruin the place. He hadn't woken up one morning and thought 'yes, let me ruin my environment with my misery,' because Alex wasn't that kind of guy. Alex didn't think that anyone was that kind of guy, when it came down to it. Even the most unpleasant person he'd ever met hadn't found a way to passively rot everything around them. That sounded like the kind of shit that a Captain Planet villain did. 

And yet, here he was, sitting in a ruined room, smelling of mold and ashes, the floor rotting through in certain spots, scorch marks going up the walls. Alex didn't actually remember there being a fire - the scorch marks had just sort of appeared one day, without Alex doing anything. He'd gone to bed on the moldering sofa bed one night, woken up with scorch marks on the walls. For that matter, all of the black mold didn't really make much sense either. They were in California, for fuck sake - it wasn't like there was enough rainfall or ground water to get this much mold to grow. Mold needed cold, damp places, and California was the polar opposite of that. 

Sometimes, when Alex stared at the pitted walls and smelled the dust and slime around him, he considered leaving. Just getting up and leaving this apartment, going out into the real world and getting the fuck on with his life. The prospect was fucking terrifying, on more levels than he could possibly comprehend, and that, in and of itself, was probably a thing to worry about. Was he turning into some kind of agoraphobe? He hadn't left the house in... actually, how long had it been? Alex hadn't been feeling hungry, and he hadn't been paying attention to the way the light was changing as the sun rose and set. He wasn't smoking weed, which was good, he wasn't drinking any booze, that was also good. 

There wasn't the familiar gnawing at the base of his gut - the need to get a drink, the need to see people, the need to work the frenetic energy out of himself. There was just... himself. He was alone in his head, and his head seemed to have somehow expanded to fill the entire apartment, turning everything else as disgusting as he was.

... in a more lucid moment, Alex rolled his eyes at the melodrama of it. This was beginning to read like something out of the cheesier sort of gothic novel. If he was going to go crazy as the place fell down around his ears, it should have been some kind of massive, grand old house. Not an apartment in a complex in California, with its outdoor staircases and loud plumbing. Although the plumbing had been quiet lately, come to think of it. Not that Alex was going to complain too much. The grumbling pipes had kept him up, back in the day. 

But it was happening. Ryland had left, and Alex had sat down on the couch and just... hadn't gotten up. Hadn't needed to get up. He hadn't needed to eat, he hadn't needed to drink anything, he hadn't needed to get up and go to the bathroom. He had watched, impassively, as the television screen had become covered in dirt, as the cobwebs had begun to stretch from the furniture to the ceiling. And Alex knew, intellectually, that he should have gotten up and done something. Grieved actively, cried, gone out and gotten laid.

Not just sat there.

And yet. 

All he did was sit. Sit and sit and sit, because what was the fucking use of any of it? No matter what he did, nothing became of it. He tried to keep the Killcore team together, and it splintered. He tried to be Ryland's best friend, Ryland rebuffed him. He tried to draw Ryland out of the depression well that the guy had sunk down into, he'd been utterly ignored. Everything he did either annoyed people, or else he was ignored. So what was the fucking point of leaving the house in the first place? What was the point of doing _anything_ in the first place?

Alex was aware, when he wasn't staring at the wall with a distant expression, that none of this was normal. Something weird was happening, or possibly had already happened. He wasn't really sure what it was, though. It was as if the critical thinking part of his brain had been turned off, and he just existed in a meat suit, to sit here passively. He wasn't even watching the time go by, because how was he supposed to do that? He just... existed. 

Ryland would have said something about how he hadn't realized that Alex even _had_ a critical thinking part of his brain, but Ryland was just kinda... like that. Ryland had left Alex, and hadn't called, hadn't visited, hadn't done anything. He'd dropped the bombshell that he was just going to leave, and he'd... left. It had barely taken any time at all for him to pack all of his stuff up, and then he had just up and gone to live with Ash. 

Alex was just an afterthought to everyone, so why did it matter if he just sat here for the rest of forever? Who even cared?

So he did.

He sat there for who even knew how long, while the place rotted around him, and he was aware, passively, that the place was rotting around him, but who cared? It wasn't as if there was anything he could _do_ about it. There wasn't anything that he could do about any of this. There wasn't anything he could do about anything. 

And then the front door opened, and shit got weird.

* * * 

It was a bit as if Alex had just sat down, and a bit as if Alex had been sitting there for a century. He blinked at the light - the first direct sunlight he'd seen in who knew long. The walls were illuminated now, and hoo boy, but that sure was a _lot_ of black mold. There were voices, too - people were talking in hushed voices.

"Yeah," said a voice. "I heard that sometimes there's lights coming from in here. Even though the whole block has been condemned." 

"They can't condemn a whole _block_ , dumbass," said another voice. 

“Have you seen this block? It’s about as close to condemned as you can get,” the first voice retorted. It sounded indignant. 

“Of course I saw the block,” groused the second voice. “I walked here with you, didn’t I?” 

The sunlight dancing on the open door was golden, almost syrupy. Alex had forgotten that light could look like that, and his eyes were burning as he stared at it, although he seemed to be seeing… more of it, now that he thought about it. Were things always this intense? 

He hadn’t seen any direct light in who knew how long. He blinked, and maybe he was imagining things, but it seemed to take… longer than usual to do that. Still. He shifted in his seat, and various joints clicked and creaked. 

The two people behind him froze. 

He didn’t know how he could tell that they had frozen, except he could. He seemed to have more senses than he was accustomed to, which was… weird. Everything felt weird - a bit like waking up from a nap, only moreso. How long had he just been sitting there?

Alex stood up, and he seemed to do more standing than he was used to - his knees popped like champagne corks, his back clicking like castanets. Bits of the couch came with him - he must have been sitting long enough that bits of it had grown over him. He hadn’t even been aware that a couch _could_ grow. He stretched, and it seemed like there was… more of him. Then he turned around, and the indignation was finally sinking in. 

“Why are you in my house?” His voice sounded different - had his teeth changed? When had that changed? 

There were two kids standing by his front door, and their eyes were wide, their faces going pale. They looked to be guys, although Alex was half blind from the light coming in - it _hurt_ more than it had a right to, and he was blinking (and blinking - how was he blinking so much, when he only had two eyes?) into it. Both of the kids had pale skin, although their faces seemed to be going paler - almost grey. One of them whimpered, and then they were both screaming, and they were both just… gone, leaving the door gaping open, letting in more light. 

Alex scowled. “Rude little shits,” he called after them, and his voice creaked with disuse. He almost cut his tongue on one of his teeth, and no, that couldn’t be normal, could it? He’d never had that kind of trouble with his teeth before. What kind of people had to worry about cutting their mouths with their teeth, anyway? 

He stretched, his hands over his head, and oh, that felt good. He was… dusty, and he was _aware_ he was dusty, aware of the layer of grime and dust and grease covering him. “Wow,” he said, in his creakiing, rough voice. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” He made his way towards a light switch, and he was still stiff, his joints creaking and cracking with disuse. 

The light didn’t turn on when he flicked it, and he frowned, aware of his brow wrinkling, aware of the tension in his shoulders and his lower back. Maybe the lightbulb was faulty? Or else something was wrong with the circuit breaker? He went from room to room, leaving footprints in the dust, and tried various other light switches, with no results. 

He was vaguely aware that there was a fuse box in the basement of the complex, although he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it - he’d read somewhere that you flipped switches? He’d always been utterly hopeless when it came to electricity related stuff - after the time he’d accidentally set fire to his parent’s basement, he’d been banned from any kind of tinkering. Still - he could manage this, right? He was a grown ass adult, and he could manage his problems like an adult. He just had to flip those switches, and things would turn out alright.

Something was happening. He was _missing_ something, and he was aware of that. He was equally aware that he didn’t actually want to know what it was that he was missing, which was equally weird. Then again, Alex was a goddamn savant at ignoring things, and even he knew that. He’d ignored Ryland’s indifference to him for all these years, ignored the jabs people gave him, ignored their indifference that bordered on contempt, ignored the fact that he wanted to crawl into a hole and rot. 

Alex nearly stepped in a bad patch of flood, which was soft and sagging with mildew. He swore, nearly falling, his arms pinwheeling, all the various other bits of his body spinning as well. There seemed to be more of them than he was used to, but he was probably just out of it. Everything still seemed to be coming from a long way off - he was still in something like a fog, after sitting there for such a long time. Who knew that he could be this much of a space cadet?

Ryland, probably.

There was a pang in the vicinity of Alex’s stomach at the thought of Ryland, although nothing like it used to be. Huh. Maybe he was finally over the guy. Although wow, Alex must have been in _some_ kind of fugue state, if he was even willing to admit to the fact that he had a thing for Ryland. He was usually a bit more in denial, even in his own head. 

Alex looked at his own front door, which still yawned open at him like some kind of open mouth. He had to go out, if he wanted to do whatever magic you’re supposed to do with fuse boxes to the fuse box. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was _supposed_ to do, but he could at least muddle along, right?

There was genuine terror growing in his throat, and that was dumb, because he’d left the house before. He’d left the house loads of times! Just… not recently. 

_I should be hungry_ , said some part of his mind. _I should need to pee._ Although it was weird to think about that. To think about how his body was supposed to work, when it wasn’t. Although his dad had made all those jokes about how getting older brought on more aches and pains, but… well. Alex barely had any. He could go so far as to say that he was barely aware of his body to begin with. 

Maybe it was a sign of the fugue state he’d been in - he’d been such a space cadet that he was only now coming back to himself. Maybe he’d been kind of stoned. He _had_ been getting stoned when Ryland had said that he was moving in with Ash, but he’d run out of weed pretty quickly. He’d been thinking about quitting the stuff, too. If Alex had felt less like he’d had the wind knocked out of him, he might have gone out to the bar, instead of just sitting.

Who knew that sitting could cause this much trouble, huh? 

Alex grinned at himself, and was he imagining things, or did he have more mouth than he was used to? How was someone supposed to know how much mouth they had, actually. His head was heavy, but… well, he always had a head that felt like it was stuffed full of _stuff_. He yawned, rubbing his eyes… and froze. 

His hands were the wrong color. Flat out the wrong color. His skin was a certain color, and that was not a human color. He might have even been okay with it being a _new_ human skin color, because… well. 

Suddenly, it was less important to find the fuse box, and more important to find a mirror. Where was the mirror? He had avoided mirrors when he was… what? Alex wasn’t sure how he felt about referring to things as a “before” and an “after” - what was the before? What was the after? Alex stumbled towards the bathroom, his knees still clicking. He rolled his shoulders, trying to work the tension out of his shoulders.

His shirt crumbled into so much dust.

Alex sneezed - he sneezed so hard that his head shook, and snot dripped down his face. He wiped it on the back of his hand, and then he tried not to stare at it, because _fuck_ , his skin was… what, purple? The light was murky, but that very much looked like some shade of purple. Not bruise purple, either - just flat out _purple_ , and there were… claws. Fucking claws.

“This isn’t good,” said Alex, his tone conversational, and he sneezed again, hard enough that his ears were ringing. His hair was longer than it had been, dangling against back, tickling against his bare shoulders. His voice sounded odd - were his ears different, or his voice? He was clunking his way into the bathroom - what was up with his _feet_ , come to think of it? He didn’t want to look down, because everything was just… wrong.

It was all wrong.

Alex walked into the bathroom, and he blinked at his own reflection. The window was letting in dusty sunlight, and it dripped over his skin like he’d been bathing in honey. His face was… wrong. Strange. He had too many eyes, and... were those horns? He brought his hands up towards the top of his head. Those were horns, buried amongst his hair, and they were curled like a ram’s, the same purple-maroon color as his skin. His hands were… his hands didn’t have fingers. They were claws. Full on claws. 

How did that even work? Claws didn’t have knuckles. They didn’t bend. They just existed. But his fingers were bending. How was he _bending_? This was really, really weird. All of this was weird. 

Huh.

Alex was very aware that he was noticing things from a long way off. Was this dissociating? He’d read about that - it apparently happened to some people when they got high, although it had never been a problem for him before. It apparently was now.

Although was there a “him” to dissociate in the first place? When he saw himself, he looked like… well, like himself. He had skin colored skin, he had a face with only two eyes, not however many were blinking back at him. He looked like a person, not like… well, whatever it was that the thing in the mirror looked like.

Alex sank down onto his haunches, crouching on the floor, and he was lost in that same fugue again, just sitting on the bathroom floor. The light changed from golden syrup to darkness to grey to full sun again, then back to the syrup. He stared at the cabinet in front of him, and he was aware, faintly, that things were changing. His knees were locking up again, and the floor under him was softening. He was aware that he had a tail, although that didn’t match up with the internal vision of himself, and he almost immediately discarded it. He didn’t have a tail. Whatever that thing behind him was, flicking in the air, it wasn’t attached to him. It was just there. Everything was just there.

* * *

Alex didn’t know how long it took, but at some point the floor rotted through, and he fell into the basement. 

There wasn’t much fanfare; one minute, he was sitting on the floor, staring at nothing as his mind gibbered like something out of Lovecraft. The next, he was on the concrete floor of the basement, his various limbs aching, splinters raining down on his head. He shook his hair out, and more splinters rained out of it - he stood up, and his knees were creaking again, his muscles protesting the lack of use. 

“Well,” Alex said to the empty basement, “that was weird.” 

The basement was… well, it was a basement. It had mouldering cardboard boxes in the various corners, and mildew growing on everything. The washer and dryer seemed to have grown moss, and there were mushrooms on some of the rafters. Which was weird, considering how dry it was down here, but then again, what had been normal lately? 

What was “lately,” for that matter. 

He was... what was he? Was he tired? Was he antsy? He didn't really... know. But he stood up, and his bare feet made noises that they shouldn't have on the concrete. There was slimy rot under his feet, and that was... unpleasant, but what could ya do?

Alex could see the fuse box, and he walked towards it, squinting in the dimness. He tried not to think about how _much_ he was squinting, because... well... there are things you think about, and things you very much don't. But there was the fuse box, and he could do this. He just had to open it. He could use the light of his... phone. Although where was his phone? It hadn't buzzed at him in an age, come to think of it. Not since he'd sat on the couch. 

Okay. 

Alex opened the fuse box, and the hinges squealed like they were in pain. He winced - that was _not_ a pleasant sound - and then he stared. It was just... switches. Switches and wires, and none of them made any sense. There were cobwebs covering the whole lot of it, which made no sense - why would a spider even want to make a web in the middle of a closed box. It wasn't as if there were any bugs that would come into the closed fuse box, after all. But Alex chose a switch at random and flipped it. 

Nothing happened.

He flipped another switch. 

Still nothing.

Everything smelled like mold and mildew, and he was beginning to think he'd never breathe the fresh air again. Everything was dim and dusty, and that was... well, it was more than a little bit unpleasant, but he had it in his head that he had to just _do_ this. He'd get the lights turned back on, and then he'd be fine. 

Fumbling with the fuses like this, he was a bit too aware of how different his hands looked - the strange, dexterous claws, the equally strange color of his skin... there was absolutely _nothing_ normal about any of this, and he didn't know what to do with it, except that he wanted to scream until he couldn't use his throat anymore. But no, if he did that he'd end up sitting on the floor again, and who even knew when he'd get up from that.

Fuck. 

Alex groaned, and flipped all the switches at random, at once. 

Nothing happened. There wasn't even the familiar "clunk-clunk" sound that Alex associated with his own father fiddling with various electronic whatnots in the house. It was just silence, as the mushrooms and the mildew stared at him from the corners.

"Maybe I'm going crazy from all the black mold," Alex said out loud, and his own voice sounded odd to his ears. "That shit can cause hallucinations, right?" 

Nobody answered, thank fuck. If someone had answered, he might have screamed and then possibly dropped dead. Which would be bad. Very bad. Even with everything going... well, like _this_ , being not-dead would be better than this. Alex sighed, and he went looking for the stairs. He obviously couldn't do anything about the various electronic things. He'd have to... what, trek out to a neighbor's place, see if he could borrow their phone? Were there even any neighbors anymore? It didn't feel like it. He knew, somehow, that there wasn't anyone else around. How he knew, he couldn't tell. 

He looked down at himself, seeing his strange body, with its equally strange colors, and he tried to make his way towards the door to the stairs, only to find they were gone. 

Well, no. That was hyperbole. They were still there. There were the three steps on the bottom, and there were two steps up towards the top, and then there were broken, rotted steps in the middle of the whole lot of it. If he tried to take it, he probably would have fallen through and break something important, and then he'd die. He'd die in this moldy, empty basement, and... no. 

So... hm.

He'd figure something out. 

He leaned against a wall, and he racked his brain, trying to formulate some way to get out of here, some way to figure out how to just _leave_. He very obviously couldn't just climb out, what with the stairs. Maybe he could find a shovel or something, make that work?

And then the wall he was leaning in just caved in. 

One minute he was leaning on it, the next it crumbled against him, and then he was lying on his side in the bright light of the LA sun. He was in the backyard now, and thank fuck that the whole thing was on a hill, or else he'd have just fallen through into dirt. But no, he was sprawled out in the weedy, overgrown backyard now. 

That was weird, actually - why was there so much greenery? It had been summer when Ryland had left - things in LA weren't this weirdly verdant and green when it was summer. The default state for plant life was _brown_. Hm. 

Alex sat on the ground, and he tried not to squint too hard in the bright light. It was making his head hurt, like the worst hangover he'd ever had, only moreso. Everything seemed to be pounding, and the light on his skin was severely uncomfortable. His head was still too damn heavy, and he was so damn tired. He'd been in mold and rot for who knew how long (he tried to imagine how long he'd been sitting on that couch, or the bathroom floor, but his mind shied away from it like a horse from a snake) and then his eyes fluttered closed. Before he was aware of what was happening, Alex fell asleep for the first time in who only knew how long.

* * * 

Alex woke up when a shadow fell over him. 

He didn't know how he knew that there was a shadow over him, but as soon as he felt it, he was jolted awake. It was almost like that sensation of falling while you're sleeping, except... less so.

He blinked his eyes open (oh god, he had too many eyes, but if he thought about _that_ too hard he wanted to start screaming) and he looked up into the thing that was blocking out the sun.

It was a guy.

Not a particularly interesting looking guy, come to think of it - tallish, lanky dude with a narrow face and long, curly brown hair. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and he had his hands stuffed into his pockets. He was giving Alex a look that could best be described as concerned. 

"Why are you in my backyard," said Alex, because that was the most pressing concern. First the random people coming into his apartment, then some random person coming into his backyard... did people not know about private property anymore or something?

"I was walking by, saw you lying here," said the guy, although that had to be a flagrant lie, because you couldn't actually see the backyard from the sidewalk. "Are you alright?" 

"I'm fine," said Alex, and he sat up, slowly. Then he paused. When he'd lain down, he'd been on grass. It hadn't been particularly soft grass - any grass that wanted to survive the sun of LA had to be particularly tough, and this grass was prickly and stiff. But it wasn't there anymore. He was lying on loam now, the dirt a deep, dark color almost like good chocolate. Although the grass next to him was perfectly fine.

Huh.

"I just, uh... I don't see folks like you around that much," said the guy, and now he looked downright uneasy. "Are you sure it's... safe, to be out like that?"

"What are you talking about?" Alex sat up fully, and then he saw his own purpled skin, and it took effort not to scream. This wasn't his body. He kept forgetting that his body kept doing that. That his body wasn't actually his body, as he remembered it. The thing that he outright _refused_ to think of as his tail lashed behind him. 

"I, uh... I think you might be safer inside," said the guy, and he was looking around now, looking downright anxious. "Not that I don't... doubt that you're a decent guy or anything, but I know that people make assumptions."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Alex said, and he attempted to make his tone as lofty as possible, although he didn't feel it. He'd been literally sleeping in his backyard, in a pair of tattered, dusty old jeans and nothing else. To say nothing about the way he looked now, what his body... well, was, all things considered. 

Whatever those things to be considered _were_ now. 

“Dude,” said the guy, and he leaned in close, so that he was almost bent double, so that he was almost speaking in Alex’s ear. Alex could have counted the hairs on the guy’s head, from this angle. 

“Dude,” Alex echoed back.

“I mean this in the nicest way possible,” the guy said, “but you look like a demon, and you’re lying out in the open. Anyone could see you, and that would go badly for everyone involved.” 

“I’m not -”

“We can argue about whether you’re a demon or not _inside_ ,” said the guy, and he grabbed Alex by the arm, hauling him upright. He was a lot stronger than he had a right to be, all things considered. 

“Fine,” said Alex, then; “I don’t think it’s, uh… it’s safe for you to go in there.” 

Sure, Alex had been breathing in mold spores and who even knew what else, but… well, who cared, right? Maybe this guy was actually a hallucination, come to think of it. Although the grip on Alex’s arm felt pretty damn real. 

Hmm.

“Are you real?” Alex spoke without realizing it, but that wasn’t a new thing. Maybe being half crazy with whatever had made him… like this was just all of the weed finally doing what all those dumb PSAs said they’d do. Admittedly, he’d never seen a PSA that too much weed could make you think that you had turned purple or grown horns or extra eyes, but… what did he know. He’d always had an odd body, so why not have some new weird reaction to chemicals. 

“I’m real,” said the guy, and then he was stopping at the back door of Alex’s apartment complex. “Can you open the door for me?”

“Why can’t you?” The guy had let go of Alex’s arm.

“I don’t know if it’s locked,” said the guy, although there was something faintly evasive about his expression. 

Alex was missing something, but he didn’t know what he was missing.

“Right,” said Alex. “Although why’d you tell me to open it, not unlock it?”

Come to think of it, Alex probably didn’t have the key, either. But it might have been unlocked, right?

As soon as Alex’s hand wrapped around the knob, it crumbled away to rust, and that was surprising - Alex hadn’t realized just how delicate it was. “Oops,” he said, because his heart was beating very fast in his chest. At least, he thought it was his chest. It almost felt like it was all over him, which made no sense. None of this made sense.

“It happens,” said the guy. 

“What’s your name, anyway?” Alex pushed the door open, and it swung on rusted, screaming hinges. Alex winced.

“... Leon,” said the guy. “You can call me Leon.”

There was another odd moment, as if there was something happening and Alex was missing it. 

“I’m Alex,” said Alex, since it was polite to introduce yourself when you asked for someone's name. 

"Do you live here?" Leon was squinting into the darkness. Everything smelled musty, rotted. It all smelled _old_. 

Alex had, by all accounts, always been a weenie. As a kid, he hadn't even been able to look at the covers of _Goosebumps_ books without needing to sleep with the lights on. He'd never been one for scary shit, or chilling shit, or anything like that. But he'd tripped over some Lovecraft, and he remembered reading _The Shunned House_ at some young age, under the covers with a flashlight. The term "fungus-cursed cellar" ran across Alex's mind like a mouse on a kitchen floor, and he wrinkled his nose. The air in the apartment complex was completely still, as if nobody had breathed it in who knew how long. It felt as if their footsteps should have echoed, as they made their way towards Alex's front door, but the air was so thick with dust and mildew that it seemed to just take the sound and swallow it. 

Now that there was another person with him, Alex was almost _painfully_ aware of how... odd he looked. How wrong. His arms were too long now - they seemed to dangle almost to the bottoms of his thighs, which didn't make sense. His shoulders were broader as well, but he was skinnier in the middle, his ribs visible and countable. When was the last time he'd eaten, come to think of it? His mouth was thick and dry, but no more than it usually was after he'd been smoking.

"So... you live here?" Leon broke the silence, and the house seemed to be listening. Another haunted house popped into Alex's head - the Guardian in those _Dark Tower_ books he'd read. He'd read those while high off of his ass, and he'd had nightmares for months afterwards, of things made of plaster and crown molding coming off of the walls to kill him. 

"Something like that," said Alex, because was he even alive anymore? How did he explain _"I sat on a couch until I literally had cobwebs growing off of my shoulders_ " to someone? Especially someone who was still looking at him funny? Although, admittedly, he would have looked at himself funny in this sort of situation. He might do that anyway, considering... well. 

Well. 

"It's, uh... it feels lived in," said Leon, when they stopped in front of Alex's door, and that was such a blatant lie that Alex burst out laughing. 

His laughter was the same, at least - kind of ugly, mostly coming out of his throat and his nose. It was rough, and even the fetid, dusty air couldn't entirely muffle it. It seemed almost out of place, and Alex shivered, goosebumps passing over his whole body.

"I didn't say _when_ it had been lived in," Leon protested, but he was grinning, his eyes bright. 

"Fair enough," said Alex, and he pushed his front door open. More screaming hinges, and he _really_ needed to oil those, because it was getting very old very quickly. "I feel like I should argue with that, but I can't really think of a good argument."

"Take it as a sign you shouldn't actually argue with it," Leon advised.

"Can I, uh, get you anything?" Alex stood in the middle of his rotting, musty apartment, and he felt something like embarrassed. He'd never been the best host, back when he lived with Ryland, but a big chunk of that had been... well, Ryland wasn't really a host. Alex had ended up doing hospitality _around_ Ryland, like a particularly big dog that refused to move. 

"Do you have anything?" Leon shoved his hands in his pockets. He closed the door behind the two of them, and it was immediately dark, and the air was almost stifling. There was some late afternoon sun trying to get in through the dirty windows, but all that made it through was weak, almost watery. 

"I... don't know," said Alex. "We - _I_ \- don't seem to have electricity, so the fridge might have gone bad, but I don't _think_ that the water got turned on?"

"Well, I'll happily take a glass of water if you're asking for one," said Leon. 

The whole conversation was taking on a surreal bend, like standing in the middle of a Salvador Dali painting, minus the melting clocks and the pianos being sodomized. It was all so... normal, but Alex wasn't normal anymore. He was about as close to not normal as he could get - he was too _big_ , he was the wrong color, he had extra eyes.

For that matter, why wasn't Leon freaking out? Alex had freaked out when he'd seen himself, but Leon didn't seem bothered at all - he just looked at Alex with a thoughtful expression, as if Alex was a puzzle he was trying to decipher. 

"Don't, uh... don't go into the bathroom," Alex said. "There's a hole in the floor that is probably pretty dangerous."

"Right," said Leon. He leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, and Alex tried not to look too anxious. What if Leon fell through the wall, the way Alex had?

Alex made his way to the kitchen, which had a layer of dust thicker than powdered sugar on a fairground's funnel cake. When Alex opened the cabinet, he found... nothing. "I think my roommate took all of the glassware," he said, his tone apologetic. "Sorry."

"It's okay," said Leon, and he was walking over to the sink, turning on one of the taps. They squeaked, but nothing else happened. "I don't think you have any water."

"Huh," said Alex. "That's weird. I should probably call the city about that. They can't just take someone's water, can they?" 

"No, they shouldn't be able to do that," said Leon, "but this place has been abandoned for a while."

"Has it?" Alex frowned. "It can't have been abandoned. I've been here." Admittedly, part of his "being there" had just been sitting on a couch, or in the bathroom, or in the basement, but still. Didn't they have to, like, send people to check on it?

Leon shrugged. "The local kids talk about it," he said. "They say that it's haunted."

"I mean, do _I_ count as haunting it?" Alex made a broad gesture at his current appearance.

Leon shrugged, looking faintly uncomfortable. "I'm the wrong one to ask about that," and the way he said it came off as downright shady. His tone was evasive, and Alex wasn't in the mood to chase down whatever it was that Leon was feeling. He'd spent enough of his time dealing with Ryland's moods - he wasn't managing some stranger's. 

"So... uh... you come here often?" Alex was running out of his usual small talk routines. He met people at bars, or at Killcore tournaments. What did you talk about, when you looked like something out of a horror movie or a monster hentai? Especially when standing in the dusty remains of your own kitchen? 

Leon snorted. “Not to this neighborhood, no,” he said. “It’s pretty residential - not much to do.”

“Right,” said Alex. 

“Are you gonna be okay?” Leon was looking at Alex with an intense expression. “By yourself, I mean.”

“I should be fine,” said Alex, as he wandered towards the living room. He looked down, and he saw the spot where he’d been sitting - it had a fine coating of dust, versus the thicker dust over everything else.

“You sure?” Leon was biting his lip - he looked genuinely apprehensive.

“What are you worried about, specifically?” Alex was already thinking of his stuff - he probably had an old film canister with weed in it, stuffed into extra socks. Would it be any good? Could weed actually _go bad_?

“I mean, to be blunt, you seem a bit like you’re going to fall to pieces if I stop looking at you,” said Leon. “I don’t really know you… at all, but I don’t want to end up in a situation where I leave someone who’s obviously dealing with a lot.”

“I’m not dealing with a lot,” Alex protested. “I could say that I’m having, like, the opposite problem!”

“It could be argued,” said Leon, “that having the opposite problem is, in fact, a problem in and of itself.” He was frowning, and his chin was jutting out. “Anyway, I kind of suspect that if I leave you alone you’ll end up sitting down and not getting up again.” 

“I’ll be fine,” Alex said again. This was weird. Even Ryland hadn’t cared about him like this. Although then again, Ryland hadn’t really seemed to care about him at all, towards the end.

“Alex?” Leon’s voice seemed to be coming from a long way off, come to think of it. That was odd.

“Mm?”

“I mean this in the nicest way possible, but you’re baring your teeth, and they’re very sharp.” Leon sounded faintly spooked.

“Oh,” said Alex, and he closed his mouth, with effort. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” said Leon, and gave Alex a look that might have been sympathetic, might have been nervous. In this murky light, who could tell? “So… you want to go out?”

“Go out where?” Alex blinked at him, trying to gather his thoughts. The idea of going out - out to places that weren’t his home, or practically within touching distance of his home - felt… alien. Scary. Wrong. 

“There’s a park nearby,” said Leon. “We could go walk around a bit? If you’ve been sitting around in all of this, it can’t be good for you. A bit of fresh air would be good for you.”

“I don’t want to scare people,” said Alex. “I look like a weird Halloween decoration.”

“We could go to the park?” Leon glanced out the window, where the sun was still doing its valiant best to light up the room. 

“What park?” Alex didn’t remember there being a park around here, come to think of it. 

“There is now,” said Leon. “This whole area has kinda… gone to seed, and the government kinda decided that it would be a better idea if they just tried to open a national park here. Especially with the desert.” 

“Desert? What bit of the desert?” Alex was trying to wrap his mind around all of it.

“Just… trust me on this,” said Leon. “We can wait until it gets dark, then we can go out.”

“Why are you so determined to get me out of here? Are you going to try to rob the place or something?” Alex knew what he was saying was dumb even before the syllables left his mouth.

“Ah, yes,” said Leon, his voice flat. “I know couches growing their own ecosystems are a hot commodity on the black market, gotta make sure that I’m getting in on that action.”

“And you know it,” said Alex. 

“If this was a book, I’d be a lot more afraid,” said Leon. “Although to really keep the spirit of it, I think you’d have to be in the basement, not the ground floor.”

“I dunno,” said Alex, his expression thoughtful. “In that one book I read, the guardian or the door keeper or whatever was living _in_ the house. Like, not inside of the house like we’re inside of this room, but like… it was made of the house.”

“What book was that? _The Wastelands_?” Leon looked interested.

“Yeah,” said Alex. “I think so. It’s the one with that whole city -”

“With the people going crazy because of Z. Z. Top, right?” Leon was grinning.

“I could never buy that,” said Alex. “I mean, I like Z.Z. Top well enough, but it’s not exactly music that would set off a ravening horde.” 

“If you don’t know where it’s coming from,” Leon countered, “that could do things to people.”

“Maybe it could,” said Alex, “but still. He couldn’t have chosen something less… like that?” He made a vague hand gesture.

They were talking. They weren’t talking about anything that was particularly of consequence or that took much in the way of effort, but… still. It was a conversation about something that Alex wanted to talk about, _cared_ about. 

"Less like what? Are you saying that you can't imagine Z. Z. Top inspiring death?" Leon went to sit down on a chair that looked... squishy with mold, which was probably very uncomfortable. 

"If _I_ lived in a strange city and occasionally heard fucking... what was it, _Sixteen Tons_?" Alex must have been out of it, if he was having this much trouble with remembering the title of a Z. Z. Top song. 

" _Velcro Fly_ ," said Leon.

And Alex burst into tears. He didn't mean to, and there was the odd sensation of tears dripping _onto_ his eyes, as if his eyes had other eyes on top of them. He still wasn't used to that. 

Leon made a slightly distressed noise. "Do you... not like the song?" He sounded lost, and he was approaching Alex with some anxiety, reaching a hand out to rest on Alex's shoulder, then pausing, pulling it back, then putting it back. 

Alex let the hand stay there, and he kept crying. Leon's skin was so _hot_ , compared to his own. Unexpectedly hot. Alex didn't even remember the last time another person had touched him. Not even just... like this, just in general. When had another person reached out to him? Not since way before Ryland had moved out. Since Ryland had started dating Ash, had started to ignore Alex. 

"Hey," Leon said, and his voice was quiet. "Are you... are you okay?"

"You know Z. Z. Top," Alex mumbled, and he wiped his nose on the back of his hand. "I mean... you know Velcro Fly. You _know_ it."

"Well, yeah," said Leon. "I read the book when I was at the right age for it, and then it, uh... I decided I might as well look up the song, y'know?"

"You _read_ the _book_ ," Alex wailed, because he was having a lot of feelings, and he was having them all at once. They were all coming out of his face, and there were other things coming out of him as well, he could feel them pushing their way out of his skin. He wanted to scream, because there was pain, only it... wasn't pain, it was something else, something that was filling him up, and then Leon was clearing his throat, looking faintly embarrassed.

"Um, Alex?" Leon rubbed his hands together. It made a dry sound. "You're growing mushrooms."

"M-m-mushrooms?" Alex looked down at his own arms, and that... huh. He did indeed have mushrooms growing out of him. He wondered, in some far off, hysterical part of his mind, whether he could get high if he ate any of the mushrooms. Or was that too much like cannibalism? Autocannibalism? Did eating your own mushrooms count?

"Yeah," said Leon. "Although, uh... they look nice?" He seemed a bit lost for words. 

Alex couldn't really blame him. "I don't know what to do with this," he told Leon. 

"Well," said Leon, "what do you want to do? We can take the mushrooms off, but that might hurt."

"Versus growing mushrooms in the first place," said Alex, and there was a hysterical note in his voice. "Of course. I'm growing mushrooms."

"So you came equipped with the horns and the... everything else to begin with?" Leon sounded completely blase, calm. Almost bored. He was clearly trying to sound chill, but it was annoying Alex a bit. 

Was that why Ryland had always been so grouchy? Being around someone who was trying to be the Calm One was a weird sort of frustrating. Unexpectedly, a wave of sympathy washed over Alex, like standing next to the edge of the water at the beach.

And the mushrooms fell off of him. Just like that, full on just dropped off.

"Wow," said Leon. "I've never seen it happen like _that_."

"You see," Alex said, and his voice was shaky, "when you put it like that, it makes it sound like you've seen some random dude who looks like something off of a heavy metal album cover grow mushrooms before, just not have them all drop off at the same time." He was doing his best to sound reasonable now. 

Was this what adulthood was like for other people? Just having a reasonable-off? Imagine that - Alex being the type who'd end up having a reason off with someone. He might even win it!

"Well," said Leon, his voice dead serious, "you don't know my life, do you?"

"No," said Alex. "Come to think of it, I don't." His expression was thoughtful. "You wanna fill me in on it a little bit?" 

Leon looked... well, actually, Alex couldn't really read whatever it was that Leon's face was doing. "I'm pretty dull, all things considered," he said, and his tone was glib enough that Alex could tell that he was hiding...something.

"You can't be any more boring than I am," Alex countered, because how else was he supposed to respond to that. "I'm the one who's been sitting in the same spot for who even knows how long."

"True enough," said Leon, and he laughed, then looked thoughtful. "Actually. Are you hungry?" 

Alex gave a self assessment, or as close to one as he could get. "I could eat," he said at last, although was that actually... true? He wasn't sure

He had a mouth with newly pointed teeth, which his tongue kept bumping into. Could he taste things anymore? Ordinarily, that wouldn't even be a thing he'd ask, but, well... well. 

He had a new body. sort of. It still felt like his own body, inasmuch as his own body had ever felt like his own body, but that, admittedly, wasn't much. he'd always been too gawky, too awkward. His limbs were too long, and some inner picture of himself was still four feet tall, with normal sized hands and feet (if huge thumbs). So nothing entirely felt like it felt, but nothing had ever fit in the first place.

"Do you want me to go out and get you food?" Leon rocked on his feet, his expression thoughtful. 

Alex realized, with a pang, that he didn't actually want Leon to leave. He was... lonely. He was _achingly_ lonely, and it was a different sort of loneliness than he was used to - the loneliness of pining for Ryland, the loneliness of longing for belonging. As if he'd ever belong anywhere anymore. 

He made to shove his hands into the pockets of his jeans, then thought better of it - he didn't want to end up tearing holes in them. "I can wait a bit," Alex said. "Unless you're trying to, like, subtly tell me that you don't want to hang out with me anymore?"

"No, no," said Leon "I was just thinking that you might be hungry, and we've got some time until the sun sets and you can go out."

"Oh," said Alex. "Um. I hadn't thought of that." 

Leon grinned at him, and it was a surprisingly toothy grin. It made something in Alex's stomach twist, although he wasn't sure what kind of twist it was. "I'm the type who thinks things through," he said. "So. What would you like?"

"Uh," said Alex. "I have no idea."

"I'll figure something out," said Leon. "You gonna be inside when I get back?"

"Yeah," said Alex. "It's not like I can go anywhere, anyway." 

"I'll be back soon," said Leon, and he patted Alex on the shoulder, his hand still blisteringly warm, warm enough that Alex wondered vaguely if the guy had a fever. 

"See you soon," said Alex, and his voice was plaintive. He'd have felt embarrassed, if he had it in him to feel much in the way of shame. 

"Exactly," said Leon, and then he was leaving Alex alone in the fetid air. 

_There sure are a lot of ways to describe an old house,_ thought Alex, and he sighed, scrubbing his hands across his face. His palms passed across his second set of eyelids, and he tried not to wince too hard. This was all too... weird, but there was nothing eh could do about it, was there?

Lacking anything else to do, he went into Ryland's room. He'd never had a room to himself - he'd always just slept on the couch. Maybe it made sense, in some way, that he turned the couch into a part of his own body, practically. It had been where he'd spent all of his time, wasn't it?

Ryland's room was pretty much empty. Ryland had taken all of his stuff. The bed was stripped, the bare mattress now more like a moldy marshmallow left out on some countertop than anything a human body would ever want to interact with. The shelves were empty, and the desk had sunk down at some point. Everything was covered in more of that thick, thick dust. 

Alex was surprised at how… not sad he felt. He expected himself to be choked up, or maybe be exceedingly sad, since his best friend was gone. But he didn’t. He didn’t feel much of anything. It was just… an empty room. 

Was he losing his humanity? Was he losing his _self_? Who even was he, at this point? He kept standing there, staring faintly off into the distance, lost in thought. Who was he? _What_ was he?

And then a hand landed on his shoulder, and he screamed, jumping. He was heavy enough that the soft floor began to bow when he landed on it, and he took a step back hurriedly… bumping into Leon. 

Leon, who was standing behind him looking faintly shell shocked, holding a plastic bag. The smell of Indian food was filling the room, mixing oddly with the mildew scent, but Alex realized that it was the first food he’d smelled since this place was… well, if not clean, then cleaner than this. 

“You okay?” Leon looked concerned. He’d tied his hair back, and his ears were very pink and very… there. Alex was focusing on the,m, possibly to save his dignity, or whatever was left of it. 

“Yeah,” said Alex. “I think I, uh, got a bit in my own head.”

“You do that a lot, don’t you?” Leon shifted the plastic bag from hand to hand, flexing his fingers.

“Yeah,” said Alex. “I’m kinda used to being in my own head. Spent a lot of time by myself.”

“Right,” said Leon. “Well, I was thinking maybe we could eat in the backyard? The air would be fresher.”

“Right,” said Alex. “Weren’t you worried about people seeing me?” It was nice, to be thought of like that. For someone to worry about him.

“I’m a little worried about that,” Leon admitted, but I didn’t realize how empty this bit of town was.

“If it’s so empty, why were you walking by in the first place?” Alex felt a bit like he was finally thinking, when his head had been completely stuck in… something else. 

“Honestly?” Leon looked embarrassed.

“Honestly,” said Alex.

“I get… anxious around people,” said Leon. “I’m not the best at them.”

“I guess you’ve been doing pretty well with me, since I’m not actually a person,” Alex said, his voice dry.

“That’s not what I meant,” Leon said, and he looked frustrated. “Although that’s a good example of it.”

Alex shrugged, but he nodded. “I get it,” he said. 

“There’s also a really good Indian food place nearby,” Leon said. “That’s where I got the food from.”

“Oh,” said Alex. “Well, uh, thank you.”

“Of course,” said Leon. “You want to go eat food and not, like, a million gallons of dust?”

“I don’t think you can measure dust in gallons,” said Alex, as they made their way towards the door. 

“You can measure it however you want,” Leon countered.

Alex snorted, and then he sighed, as they stepped out into the sunlight. It was nice, to feel the warmth of the sun on his skin, but it was… uncomfortable, at the same time. Uncomfortable, in a way that he didn’t know how to explain. 

But right now, there was food. Food was all he needed.

* * *

They ate.

Alex was ravenous - he wolfed his portion down, then ate most of Leon’s. He would have been embarrassed about his rudeness, bt… well, it was offered, right?

And then the sun was down. 

There was something off about the way Alex was experiencing time, and he could tell, even if he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. But things were moving slowly, and then they’d speed up and he’d be someplace else.

Like now. He was in the park with Leon. 

They must have walked to the park, it wasn’t as if they could just… teleport to the middle of the desert, right? But now he was standing in the desert with Leon, ambling towards a particularly big cactus.

“How’d that happen?” Alex tried to keep his tone calm, casual. He surveyed his memories, since he’d finished eating - it couldn’t have been that long, if his mouth still tasted like tikka masala, and he had a little smear of sauce on his cheek. 

“How did what happen?” Leon went to sit on a bench and he stretched. His whole face was beginning to look more relaxed - Alex hadn’t realized just how stressed the guy had been in the first place. 

“When did we.. ge there?” Alex sat down next to Leon. He looked at his own footsteps, and saw… well. 

The desert sand was yellow-orange. The spots where he had stepped were dark, almost loamy. How had his body managed to do that? Was he the one doing it? Leon’s footsteps were just that - footsteps.

“We just got here,” Leon said, and yeah, his expression was definitely evasive. Alex was missing something.

“How’d we get here?”

“We walked,” said Leon.

Alex looked down at his feet, which were now more like hooves than feet, and he stretched, his hands behind his head. He could feel the base of his horns, and they were… strange - it was his body, but his own body had never felt like that.

“Do you have any idea how you became a demon?” Leon looked sidelong at Alex, and Alex’s heart beat faster. Was it his heart? It didn’t just feel like his heart - it felt like his _everything_ was beating.

“Am I a demon?” Alex looked down at his own body, clenching his fingers, at his purpled skin. 

“Yeah,” said Leon. “A demon of decay, maybe?” 

“Great,” Alex grumbled. “I become a demon, and it’s not even for something cool.” He was talking all of this remarkably calmly, come to think of it. He wasn’t even freaking out over the fact that he was apparently a demon. How about that? Although some small part of him in the background was screaming loudly, which was unexpected. He wasn’t sure what to make of that. He could just ignore it for now, right?

He was really good at ignoring things he didn’t want to deal with. 

“Decay is important,” Leon protested. “Where would we be without decay? We wouldn’t have any fertilizer or anything like that, which would fuck us over pretty badly.”

“So I’m a demon of fertilizer,” said Alex. “Well, that’s good, because this smells like shit.”

Leon shrugged. “Could be worse,” he said.

“I’m a demon,” Alex said in a long suffering tone. “How do I get better from that?”

“You don’t really get better from being a demon,” said Leon. “But you do adapt to it.”

“Great,” Alex said flatly. “I have something I need to adapt to.”

“You’re not the only demon,” Leon said. “Although I’m kind of curious how you did it.”

“I have no idea,” Alex said, which was true. “I just kinda… sat there, and it happened.”

“That’s not how it happened with me,” said Leon, and that… wait, what?

“What do you mean, with you?” Alex looked sidelong at Leon.

“I’m also a demon,” Leon said, as if that was just a thing you _said_. 

“You look human,” Alex said, because he couldn't’ think of a better thing to say in these circumstances. 

“It’s a trick,” said Leon. “I can teach it to ya, if you’d like?” 

“How do you teach how to look human?” 

“A few things,” said Leon. 

“So you didn’t become a demon by just sitting on a couch for… a while?” Alex couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. Although the bench under him was already starting to grow a few mushrooms, so… well. 

“No,” said Leon. “No, I… I got angry.” He laughed, and it was a humorless laugh. “I got so angry that I couldn’t think, and somehow I was on fire. Full on burning like a Roman candle, and I couldn't stop.”

“Oh,” said Alex. “That, uh… that sounds unpleasant.”

“It was exceedingly unpleasant. But it was a while ago.” 

“Right,” said Alex. 

“Do you… want to see my demon form?” Leon seemed almost shy.

“Sure,” said Alex. It was dark, but he could see perfectly fine. Which should have been a sign, come to think of it.

Leon closed his eyes, and then he opened them. His skin… changed. It was a bit like a blush, except it continued, to Leon’s neck, down his arms. It was probably a full body blush, only Leon’s skin _stayed_ red, and it kept going red, as Alex kept watching. Horns just… appeared - no popping or grinding, no sense of skin splitting, just horns, appearing.

It was weird. 

It was all unsettlingly weird. 

Alex licked his lips, but he kept his eyes on Leon, until finally, the guy - the demon? - opened his eyes.

“So,” Leon said, and now his voice had the crack and pop of a log in a fireplace. “This is me.”

“Well,” said Alex, “at least we match?”

Leon tilted his head back and laughed, and it sounded like a piece of green wood burning, the sap exploding out of it. He held a hand out, and Alex took it.

Alex wasn’t thrilled about looking… well, like this, but at least he’d have some company while he did it, right? And there was certainly worse company to be had.

**Author's Note:**

> Like this fic?
> 
> Want me to write you something like it, or something completely different?
> 
> Come talk to me on my twitter, TheseusInTheMaz (no "e" at the end).


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